7:06 PM

The middleweight beltholder of Bellator has officially signed with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, he announced Tuesday on Twitter.Bellator had until early May to match the offer, but CEO Bjorn Rebney told MMAFighting.com that his organization declined to do so. UFC later confirmed the signing with USA TODAY.

His jump to UFC loomed as a likely possibility this year as he became a free agent after eight fights for Bellator from 2009 through 2011. In recent months, Zuffa president Dana White has openly admitted his interest in Lombard for UFC.

The veteran of Pride Fighting Championships and the Australian regional circuit has one of MMA's longest unbeaten streaks at 25 fights over the last five years. Although he represented Cuba in judo at the 2000 Olympics, Lombard's trademark in mixed martial arts has been punching power.

Nineteen of his 31 victories came via knockout or submission to punches. He knocked out six of his last eight opponents. Two of his three Bellator fights in 2010 lasted less than a minute, including a six-second knockout of UFC veteran Jay Silva.

Rebney has said that if Lombard leaves Bellator, the promotion will bestow its middleweight title on the winner of a bout later this year between the winner of its 185-pound tournament last fall, Alexander Shlemenko, and the victor of the middleweight tourney currently taking place.

It will be Shlemenko's second title fight for Bellator. He lost a five-round decision to Lombard in October 2010.

Three years after its launch, Bellator is starting to see its first wave of stars become free agents. The company's original marquee names were Lombard and lightweight Eddie Alvarez, whose contract will expire later this year.

Some promotions' contracts include so-called champions' clauses that give them exclusive rights with reigning titleholders after their deals run out, but Bellator only retains that negotiating power for a few months, followed by a brief period in which it has the right to match offers from other organizations.

However, Bellator has signed some of its bigger names to longer stints than other major promotions. Lombard and Alvarez each fought eight times for Bellator; Alvarez could compete once more under his current deal if the promotion offers him another fight in the next four months. On the other hand, many UFC stars sign contracts lasting six bouts or less.

Although Bellator became part of a large corporation when Viacom bought a controlling stake last year, the MMA promotion still generates far less revenue than UFC. While Bellator can offer competitive base purses, the brand's reliance on basic cable/satellite programs means it can't replicate UFC's ability to offer high-profile fighters percentages of pay-per-view sales.

"The UFC model is largely based on pay-per-view, and the offer they made to Hector is going to be monetized via pay-per-view," Rebney told MMAFighting.com. "While pay-per-view could play a role in our future, today it doesn't."

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